astrology

Madame Clairevoyant: Horoscopes for the Week of July 20

Whitney Houston, a Leo. Photo-Illustration: by Preeti Kinha; Photos Getty

On Monday, a new moon in intuitive Cancer marks a point of reflection and intention, of change and new beginnings. This is a moment to honor your feelings, even the difficult and strange ones, as you chart a course forward. Early Wednesday morning, the sun enters warm and confident Leo. Here, you might start to feel yourself in charge of your own destiny again. Here, you might start to feel a desire to shine, a need to be recognized, a powerful urge to act with loud and unabashed boldness.

Weekly Horoscope Aries

Aries Weekly Horoscope

Especially in times like these, it can be easy to imagine that real power only takes on violent forms, that real strength is necessarily brutal, uncaring, and hard. But this week, remind yourself that things can be different. Your own strength, which is so vital and energized right now, can be combative, but it can also be constructive. You can lift your voice in anger, and you can lift it up in solidarity. Sometimes it’s violence that changes the world and builds the future, but sometimes, instead, it’s a bold and blazing love.

Weekly Horoscope Taurus

Taurus Weekly Horoscope

When the external structures that have shaped your life get warped and bent beyond recognition, it’s easy to feel like this is somehow a reflection of you — as though your own internal structures, or even your personality itself, have warped and bent and weakened. This week, try not to take on any more shame over things that aren’t your fault. Instead, just do your best to build new structures to replace the ones you’ve lost. It won’t be fast or easy, but know that you’re moving onto something better.

Weekly Horoscope Gemini

Gemini Weekly Horoscope

This week, you might feel like you’re at odds with yourself — like your desire for safety is locked in insurmountable conflict with your need for adventure and change, or like your desire for intimacy is competing with your fear of being truly seen. This might make you feel off-balance; it might make you act in ways that are surprising, even to you. The important thing this week is not to be afraid of how much you want. Now is the time to fight the idea that you’re forever doomed to dissatisfaction. Now is the time to let yourself want everything — for yourself, for the people you love, for everyone.

Weekly Horoscope Cancer

Cancer Weekly Horoscope

Sometimes, you get seized by a powerful desire to reinvent yourself — to become strong where you once were weak, or loud where you once were timid, or wild where you once were tame. This week, though, you can reject the idea that you need to change in some fundamental way. You can reject the idea that your softness has no value, or that your quiet intuition is useless, or that the care you offer the world must be loud and fiery if it’s going to matter. You don’t have to become a different version of yourself; instead, you can embrace the person you already are.

Weekly Horoscope Leo

Leo Weekly Horoscope

This is a week to resist the impulse to see the world only through the lens of power, of dominance, of might. This sort of analysis can be useful, but it’s not the only way to make sense of reality. This week, you’ll have the best results when you think collaboratively, when you try to imagine yourself into a world where dominance is not the only mode of relation, where it’s possible to get and to give all the care and the joy that you need.

Weekly Horoscope Virgo

Virgo Weekly Horoscope

It’s easy to overestimate your own responsibility to the world. It’s easy to imagine that you must be always perfect and never wrong, always generous and never cranky. But just because you can see what work needs to be done, that doesn’t mean you must be the one to do it all. And it isn’t selfish or frivolous to rest, to play, to allow yourself moments of beauty and grandeur and pure enjoyment. You can keep doing the work, but you can be a little gentler to yourself, too.

Weekly Horoscope Libra

Libra Weekly Horoscope

This is a week to remind yourself that there’s nothing wrong with needing to be seen. It’s not selfish or maladjusted or weird to crave attention and validation. It can be so hard, after all, to maintain a stable self in isolation, without others there to perceive you and relate to you. So this week, if you’re feeling cranky or lonely or hopeless, try to find ways to connect across distance, even if it feels like a poor substitute for in-person contact. Try to find ways to interact and relate, ways to be seen, ways to feel like you still belong to the world of other people.

Weekly Horoscope Scorpio

Scorpio Weekly Horoscope

It’s wonderful and valuable to learn new things, to achieve deeper and deeper insights into yourself and the world outside you — but sometimes it can just get tiring, having to learn so much. And sometimes, it’s just too much, seeing so many of your beliefs and assumptions demolished and remade before your eyes. Even when the truth is what you’ve always wanted most, it can be hard to give up old ideas. So this week, as you deal with change all around you, give yourself what stability you can. Hold tight to the values and the relationships that keep you grounded, steady in yourself.

Weekly Horoscope Sagittarius

Sagittarius Weekly Horoscope

It can be difficult to find enough ways to use all the wild energy coursing through you right now. It can be difficult, in these days of confinement and isolation, to even realize all that energy is there. But nonetheless, it’s important not to let it sit unused, not to let it go sour and stagnant inside you. So this week, find ways to give form to your energy, to express it, to let it move you. It’s important to stretch your muscles, to move your body, to give your sparkling mind something useful and interesting to do.

Weekly Horoscope Capricorn

Capricorn Weekly Horoscope

Sometimes, your confidence and your caution collide in ways that leave you feeling stuck, uneasy, unable to move. You know the extent of your powers, and you know what you deserve, but there are still so many unknown factors, and there’s still so much at risk. It’s difficult to balance your fierce ambition and your desire to plan everything ahead, but you don’t have to get it perfect this week. All that matters is that you pay attention. Don’t let your confidence make you careless, but even more than that, don’t let your caution make you forget about how powerful you are.

Weekly Horoscope Aquarius

Aquarius Weekly Horoscope

Sometimes, it’s just so difficult to do the things you know are right. It’s difficult to maintain a structure; it’s difficult to maintain your sense of generosity; it’s difficult to direct your anger only at the people who deserve it when so much seems unfair. It’s difficult not to grow numb, difficult not to fall into a black hole of boredom, difficult not to convince yourself that this is how things will be forever. This week, be gentle with yourself when things are hard. You can’t be perfect all the time, but you’re always in motion toward a better future, and you truly cannot be stopped.

Weekly Horoscope Pisces

Pisces Weekly Horoscope

You might feel like your desires are pulling you in all different directions this week — like you want closeness and independence in equal parts, or like you want to be cared for and you want not to be bothered, all with an equal intensity. These conflicting desires may leave others bewildered; they may find it frustrating and strange, but it isn’t your job to be consistent in all your emotions. You aren’t a brand, you aren’t a product, you’re a human. And in the end, that’s all you want — to be fully and complicatedly human.

Read the weekly horoscopes for the week of July 13. The weekly horoscopes for the week of July 27 will be online next Sunday.

Get Claire Comstock-Gay’s book, Madame Clairevoyant’s Guide to the Stars, out now.

Madame Clairevoyant: Horoscopes for the Week of July 20